Chelsea stuns EPL rivals Man City

Jose Mourinho’s claim that it is ‘‘impossible’’ to compete with Manchester City’s wealth sounded fine until you remembered Chelsea’s owner is worth $11.5 billion (£6.2 billion). No, Mourinho is going to have to do better than that, and here he tried, pitting his tactical brilliance against Manuel Pellegrini’s addiction to all-out attack.

For the second time this season City’s penchant for open, orchestral play, was exposed as borderline decadent.

This was a fixture to make Chelsea’s manager salivate. He knew City would start with two strikers and at most one defensive midfielder. He could be sure gaps would open up when City were sweeping the ball forward. Mourinho was back to his Inter Milan days, when the method was to absorb pressure, compress the play and then counter-attack with unanswerable speed and force.

For the second time this season City’s penchant for open, orchestral play, was exposed as borderline decadent. In the Champions League group stage, Bayern Munich showed up the weakness, overwhelming City in midfield, controlling the ball and driving them backwards, thus blunting City’s attacking threat.

Advertisement

Against most teams this ambitious style is assured of victory by sheer weight of goals. At the start, City had scored 115 times in 37 games. They had won eight league games in a row for the first time since 1946-47. A ninth straight victory would revive the glory years of 1912-13. But nobody in modern management can match Mourinho’s talent for exploiting weakness and marshalling his own forces in the best possible tactical system.

Without Fernandinho, Pellegrini looked beyond the faintly redundant Jack Rodwell to Martin Demichelis to play deep midfield. Demichelis, a centre-back, performed admirably in the circumstances, snuffing out threats and scampering about, with ponytail bobbing, as Chelsea’s midfielders counter-attacked en masse, at pace. Too often, though, he was alone, as Yaya Toure jogged back from an attacking run and Vincent Kompany tried to control not only Eden Hazard and Willian but also his defensive partner, Matija Nastasic, who looked thoroughly uncomfortable and has not trained on this term.

Second best on the day: Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini. Photo: AP

There is the strong sense with this City side that their front half is superior to that of the 2012 title winning team while the back is weaker. Toure’s wanderlust is well known, as is his reluctance to scurry back to screen the back four. There is no Nigel de Jong in Pellegrini’s squad, and there are doubts at centre-half and left-back.

So City’s Premier League challenge this time is riskier as well as more exciting, with less balance between midfield and attack, though we must not understate the value of four goals per game as an attacking weapon. If you score that many, the chances of losing a game are slim, however imperfect the defensive strategy. With Joe Hart, Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta, City sport a trio of top-class stoppers who can carry the other defensive players in most games.

This was not ‘‘most games’’, of course. This was the master of negation, Mourinho. The teams left the field for half-time with Chelsea leading via Branislav Ivanovic’s drive from outside the box on 31 minutes and the rear half of City’s team crying out for help. Was there a truth-telling session in the dressing room? Could Pellegrini see that he had picked the wrong opponent to take chances with? The Bayern Munich home game produced no appreciable policy change from the City dugout and the team paid the price.

Understated charm: Chelsea's manager Jose Mourinho. Photo: AP

With no Sergio Aguero, City’s strike force lacked the extra dimension of darting threat and cunning. A fit Samir Nasri would also have troubled Chelsea, for whom Hazard was a constant menace, bustling down the pitch though open spaces. No one in the Premier League carries the ball from back to front better than Hazard, though Toure runs him close.

Pellegrini, ’The Engineer’, elected not to remake the team at half-time. Instead City re-emerged at a higher tempo, investing yet more faith in side-to-side play and wide thrusts.

The style that fired City to the top of the league would not be abandoned just because Mourinho was in town. But look beyond tactics and systems and you could see another problem for City.

Chelsea are not just Stakhanovites. They are blessed with match-winning talents too: Hazard and Willian especially, as well as Oscar, who started on the bench.

Pellegrini made his first move on 56 minutes, taking off Alvaro Negredo, who was a shadow of his usual self, in favour of Stefan Jovetic, whose season is just beginning. A weak attempt to win a 50-50 contest near the half-way line drew groans from City’s supporters, but at least Jovetic was willing to play closer to his midfield. While City strove for their normal rhythm Chelsea struck the woodwork for a third time, on this occasion from a Gary Cahill header.

Mourinho’s softening-up work was all very entertaining. City have a ‘‘responsibility’’ to win the league. They should have won more trophies already. Competing with them is impossible. And so on, until the propaganda machine explodes. Provocations were not the defining feature of this match.

Here was an idea about how the game should be played colliding with a clever strategy to trample such idealism.

What we learned is that City will stick to their faith and Chelsea are formidable under Mourinho: not just in the negative sense of stopping opponents playing but with their sudden bursts of creative energy.

Those who assumed City dancing their way to their title will have slightly more room for doubt. Those who questioned the wisdom of Mourinho’s return are also now less confident. This title race is more compelling than ever.

The Daily Telegraph, London

4 comments so far

Boring game thanks to Mourinho who wants to ruin the EPL with his boring style of coaching. If Mourinho wants to coach to an Italian defensive style of play he should go back to Inter Milan.

Commenter

Chuck Norwich

Date and time

February 04, 2014, 9:22AM

Did you even watch the game? End to end football is boring? Let me guess Barcelona play entertaining football...another bandwagon supporter

Commenter

Bikabika

Location

Sydney

Date and time

February 04, 2014, 10:42AM

Chuck you must be watching the wrong game. Jose was so boring he won the treble at Inter, broke the best club team Barcelona with Pep in the Spanish League and achieved record goals and points. Chelsea are only just warming up but you carry on watching somewhere else as the Special One racks up a few more trophies.

Commenter

Martin

Location

Sydney

Date and time

February 05, 2014, 7:52AM

BORING GAME????????????????????????????????? This was one of the most entertaining 1-0 games I've ever seen from both sides. It could have easily had a much higher score. People who call Mourinho "boring" are just desperate for him to lose.